Dealing with waste material produced in ordinary household living has long been a problem, which has been dealt with in a variety of ways. Probably the most simple way to deal with household waste, or at least a very high percentage of it, is to contain all of the waste in one container. Periodically, the waste in the container is removed and relocated to either a larger container or to a waste storage site. In modern society, most residences have a service provided whereby refuse is regularly removed to some sort of waste storage site such as a land fill site or the like. Given that waste is accumulating at a tremendous, and even unbelievable rate, it is well documented that problems exist in terms of the size and number of garbage dumps and land fill sites that are required by modern society. Furthermore, the cost of collecting such amounts of garbage is enormously high.
In such a system as described above, whereby all household waste material is contained together, then there indeed would be a number of very different types of waste all combined together. Such types of waste would include organic food waste, both animal and vegetable, inorganic food waste, paper products, metals, glass, plastics, yard wastes, which are typically organic and also a small percentage of other wastes.
Combining all such wastes together and storing in some sort of storage location, such as a garbage site or land fill site, can create problems. One such problem is that enormous amounts of waste are collected in whatever type of waste storage site, and are neither re-used or re-cycled, thus producing very large waste storage sites containing vast amounts of waste. It is estimated that in North American society, for every one million people about five hundred thousand metric tonnes of waste is produced every year, and with present methods of waste disposal, very little of this is re-used.
Another problem is that in order for any of this waste to be re-used, it would need to be sorted. Given that it has already been combined together, such sorting is very difficult, time consuming, expensive, messy, and generally undesirable. Obviously, it is necessary that waste be sorted as it is produced, if it is to be re-used.
Still another problem exists with throwing away refuse, in that once something is disposed of into a garbage dump or a land fill site, it most likely will never be used again. More material must be used to replace whatever is thrown away. This means that whatever is being produced is being drawn from a supply of new material that is ultimately not being fully replenished. Unfortunately, supplies of all materials are limited, even if they are vast. While this is not quite as true for organic materials as it is for some other types of materials, it is still highly advantageous to conserve organic material for composting rather than contain it in waste storage sites. The fertilizing materials and minerals found in the compost must be replaced from another source if they are not re-introduced back into the soil through composing. Supplies of fertilizer such as peat moss or synthetic fertilizer are not unlimited, however. It is also preferable to introduce natural types of soil nutrients into the ground rather than a synthetic product.
In order to reduce the amount of waste produced by modern society it is possible to both recycle and to compost. Recycling applies to industrial materials such as paper, metals, glass, plastics, and so on. Composting applies more particularly to organic food waste and organic yard waste. It can be done very easily on a household by household basis. In order to compost, organic material, such as food waste and yard trimmings, are simply kept in a pile where the material can remain somewhat moist. It is also possible to add already composted material in order to get the composting process started more quickly. More organic material is added on an ongoing basis and is mixed in with the material already there. It is preferable that the pile be about one cubic meter in volume, but the process certainly will work as the compost pile is built up to this size. Materials such as fruits, vegetables, egg shells, grains, grass clippings, leaves, and plant remains are all suitable for composting. It is important to use some materials with a high carbon content such as leaves and materials with a high nitrogen content such as kitchen scraps and grass clippings. Composting is merely the method by which organic wastes are broken down through self sustaining catalytic exothermic reactions. The organic matter used in the composting process is returned to the soil in a form that is usable by other plants and promote plant growth. Introduction of properly composted material to soil helps make the soil rich and organic, and much more suitable for growing plants.
For proper composting it is necessary that the organic material be collected together in a damp but not overly wet environment. It is also necessary that a certain amount of air flow past and even through the mass of organic waste, since oxygen is required for the biological processes and the decomposition. The material must however be heaped together such that not enough air reaches it to dry out the material, or cool it down too much or too quickly. If there is not enough oxygen, then the composting process becomes an anaerobic one. Such an anaerobic process produces and utilizes a different kind of bacteria, which are malodorous. Furthermore, the process does not produce true compost.
It is also necessary that the material be mixed around so that all the material be exposed to the composting process. Such mixing allows material that may not be composting quickly or not very far along in the composting process to be mixed with material that is already fairly well composted. Such mixing will help catalyze the less developed composting process. Typically, this is quite helpful in getting material that has been newly introduced into a composting pile to get started more quickly in the composting process. Another advantage of composting is that a large percentage of household waste, estimated at between one third and one half, can be composted. Elimination of such a large percentage of household waste to be thrown out, reduces the cost of moving and relocating waste and also reduces the amount of waste in garbage dumps and land fill sites.